CA redistricting commissioner: Dem manipulation charges “dead wrong”

At least one member of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission is strongly refuting allegations that the Democratic Party manipulated the outcome, saying that the recent ProPublica account of state redistricting “just doesn’t match the process we went through.”

“As a commission, we ran a very transparent process, so some of the allegations made in the story are easily disproved by a look at our website and the criteria we used,” said Connie Galambos-Malloy, one of four “decline to state” voters on the 14-member commission. “If the voters investigate, it’s clear that most of the allegations are dead wrong.”
Galambos-Malloy was commenting on this week’s publication of a Pro-Publica story, “How Democrats Fooled California’s Redistricting Commission,” which alleged that the party operatives manipulated commissioners and the public process to their own political advantage as California’s Congressional lines were being redrawn.
Galambos-Malloy said the commission “wasn’t contacted before the story” for comment prior to the piece’s publication — a move she calls regrettable.
“I wasn’t reached out to,” she said. “And the story just doesn’t match the process we went through.”
Rob Wilcox, the media spokesman for the commission, confirmed in an email today: “Three Commissioners were interviewed in general about the Commission’s process in early November.” But “ProPublica did not contact the Commission for comment on the specifics of their investigation following those initial conversations,” he said.

Galambos-Malloy said that “by nature of the beast, we of the Commission always knew that political interests would try to influence the process. That’s why we tried to cast a wide net, given the resources we had to do the job.”
But “it’s really hard to believe the Democrats would have pulled one over on the Commission to this extent because when you look at the maps themselves, Reps. (Brad) Sherman and (Howard) Berman — two of the most influential and ranking members of the House — are drawn into the same district,” she said.
She said she understood that given California’s partisan politics, the complex job and the nature of political parties, not everyone would be happy with the process. “It was challenging. Change can be hard. But commissioners don’t live in a bubble. We were put there as independent thinkers.”
Still, Galambos-Malloy took special issue with Pro-Publica’s report alleging that the commission “decided to essentially shut down public process halfway through the process” and “stopped holding public hearings.”
“You never have enough time and enough resources, and I think we did the best we could given the $3 million (in funding allocated for the job),” she said. But she noted: “We had 34 public hearing and saw 3,000 speakers in person that came before our hearings. And we reviewed over 20,000 comments on line.”
California Republican Party chair Tom Del Beccaro has called for an investigation into the matter, while California Democratic Party chair John Burton Wednesday dismissed the allegations as “bull…t.”